Country life
Dressing dangerously
Leanda de Lisle
What to wear for lunch with the boss? I thought The Spectator's editor might be disappointed if his Country life columnist looked too townie, so I decided on an earth-coloured tweed skirt. I was also anx- ious to appear young and exciting and fash- ionable, however, so I took up a Vogue tip and teamed it with a stretch velvet devore shirt. 'Country, sexy. Sexy, country,' I said doubtfully as I looked at myself in the mir- ror. `Ah, you're co-ordinated with the dog,' Peter told me as he kissed me goodbye. 'Brown is the new black labrador.'
Women feel empowered by new clothes, but it's a bit risky to try them out when you want to make a good impression. Queuing for a taxi at St Pancras station I realised that there was something very wrong with my get-up. I undid my coat and discovered that my skirt was hitched up around my waist. I was reminded of the time when I got off a train at Leicester station and caught the back of my skirt in my overnight bag as I swung it over my shoulder. I walked along with my bottom exposed until a kind passer-by told me what had hap- pened.
This time I noticed that I was in a state of disarray before anyone else did. But it was some hours before I worked out that it was caused by my skirt springing up like a roller-blind every time I let it go, and so my skirt was still playing up, and up, when I met Frank at Wilton's.
I hadn't been to Wilton's since I was 21. My favourite godfather used to take me there. Funnily enough, he was called. Frank too 'Uncle' Frank. 'Uncle' Frank always insisted (and I mean insisted) that we had caviar followed by grouse. Then he would take me gambling and tell me about the women he had won on crap tables and the men he had spread all over the New Jersey turnpike. The last time we had dinner we enjoyed rather a lot of Montrachet and he proposed to me on the grounds that we both disliked celery. I didn't think anything of it. But he was obviously worried I would, and told my parents that I might have imagined this had happened. It saddens me, even now, that he thought I would have sneaked to my parents, of all people.
Lunch with my editor proved to be an entirely different Wilton's experience. There was no grouse, no Montrachet, but free choice. I told him I had just been to the opera for the second time ever, to see Otello. He delivered a potted biography of Verdi. Then he took me up the road and bought me a CD of Rigoletto. 'Uncle' Frank did take me shopping once. I had turned up at his hotel carrying my wallet in a Woolworth's carrier-bag and he swept me off to Fortnum and Mason's to buy me a calfskin handbag. Since then, I've followed Princess Margaret's example and used car- rier-bags as substitute suitcases, but not handbags. Frank's generosity similarly bore fruit. Last week I tried listening to the Country House Opera tape I found glued to my copy of Taller magazine, but I gave up after about five minutes and listened to Otis Reading instead. This morning I lis- tened to Rigoletto and found myself keen to hear it again.
The subject of my skirt didn't arise dur- ing lunch, whatever it may have done. However, I learnt a lesson there, too. Later in the afternoon I found a hat in Harvey Nichols, entirely covered with pheasant feathers. It was very chic, but arriving in the country with your head looking like a gamebird is really dressing dangerously. And I've had enough of that.
'Ooh, are you going to put me in one of your books then, Mr B?'
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